Antifraternalism and Anticlericalism in the German Reformation: Johann Eberlin von Günzburg and the Campaign against the Friars by Geoffrey Dipple (review)

BOOK REVIEWS801 Antifraternalism and Anticlericalism in the German Reformation:Johann Eberlin von Giinzburg and the Campaign against the Friars. By Geoffrey Dipple. [St.Andrews Studies in Reformation History.] (Brookfield,Vermont: Scolar Press,Ashgate Publishing Co. 1996. Pp. x, 244. $74.95.) Johann Eberlin von Giinzburg was a prolific Protestant pamphleteer, but he has received little attention in recent scholarship. In part this is due to the rather scattered, seemingly incoherent, nature of his writings. However, his work deserves attention for several reasons. In contrast with most other friars who were quite young when they left their order, Eberlin was over fifty years old when he left the Franciscan Order to join the Protestant camp. Further, the Catholic controversialist from the Franciscan Order,Thomas Murner, paid Eberlin the compliment of making his "Fifteen Confederates" a prime target ofhis attack on Protestant authors. Dipple' s study offers the reader a thorough review ofmore than a century of research on Eberlin and the German Franciscans. Prominent among the fruits of this review is the suggestion made in a German dissertation from 1902 that the usual chronology for the writing and publication of the "Fifteen Confederates" should be revised. Dipple utilizes this revised chronology in an attempt to create a more coherent understanding of the development of Eberiin's thought. Two major themes emerge in Dipple's study. FUst, he focuses on the great antifraternal fusiUade of 1523. Having been attacked by the Provincial of the south German Franciscans, Luther intensified his own attack on monastic vows and raUied former Franciscans among his followers to add to the debate.These writings did not merely echo the humanists' critique of the friars' faUure to Uve up to theU spiritual ideals; they called these ideals into question. Secondly, in an attempt to trace a more coherent pattern in Eberiin's writings, Dipple suggests that EberUn moved from his Franciscan miUeu through a period ofalliance with German humanists to an anticlerical radicaUsm which was then moderated by his acquaintance with Luther's teachings during his stay inWittenberg. Two questions emerge from this careful study. Is continuity the only model appropriate for the analysis of Eberiin's writings? Eberlin possessed a volatUe personaUty which might account for abrupt changes in his thought. Or again, on his frequent visits in northern Switzerland, Eberlin probably encountered a Protestant tradition which gloried in the discontinuity between the darkness of the false preaching during the old age and the new Ught of the true gospel. EberUn's conversion to Protestant beliefs and thought may have occurred in discontinuous bursts. Further, EberUn's critique of tithes and benefices receives Uttle attention from Dipple.To be sure, EberUn's comments on this topic are rather reserved, but the atmosphere into which he sent his writings was incendiary. Indeed, these issues lay at the heart of the peasants' cause. How do we measure the distance between EberUn's intentions and the reception of these themes among his readers? We know that Thomas Murner in his "On the Great Lutheran Fool" 802book reviews accused Eberlin of fomenting radical upheaval.The case for Eberiin's moderation might be chaUenged. These questions aside, Dipple offers the reader a superb survey of historiography and a fresh and thorough review of Eberlin as weU as other anticlerical authors. Our view of the turmoU of the early 1520's is enhanced and put in sharper focus by this study. Paul L. Nyhus Bowdoin College The World ofRural Dissenters, 1520-1 725. Edited by Margaret Spufford. (New York: Cambridge University Press. 1995. Pp. xx, 459. $79.95.) In The World ofRural Dissenters Margaret Spufford has put together a volume of material with much greater coherence than most coUections of essays. Professor Spufford and a group of her former students, and other historians working in similar areas, address key issues pertaining to what one might caU the sociology of religious nonconformity in rural and smaU-town England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.These questions have long puzzled historians : what was the social, economic, status, or occupational profile of preReformation LoUards and later Puritans, Quakers, Baptists, and Familists; what types of communities fostered religious dissent and what does the geographical typology of dissenting...